TClarke Healthcare Strategy delivers for NHS
2/10/19 : As TClarke prepares to attend the Healthcare Estates Conference in October, amid recent government announcements of an additional £1.8bn of government funding to upgrade the NHS estate, Rob Faro, MD of TClarke South West, sets out the opportunities and successes of the Group’s ongoing healthcare strategy.
We are on the key frameworks for England and Wales
It is great to attend the Healthcare Estates Conference, knowing that we are one of the small group of specialist contractors who are able to bid for the more significant NHS contracts, having succeeded in getting onto both the NHS Procure 22 framework for England and NHS Wales’ Designed for Life framework and Principal Supply Chain Members.
In the South West and Wales, and across the UK, we are delivering a series of large-scale theatre and emergency department projects and I’m proud of what our teams are delivering right now.
Our Turnkey specialist clean room and imaging room service keeps on growing
Meanwhile our specialist business which has grown out of our market leading healthcare controls expertise, in partnership with the global equipment manufacturers, has gone from strength to strength. Beyond delivering more and more projects across England – in what is an area of long-term growth, we have now expanded into Scotland with these services.
This growth is built on the fact that so many of the major global equipment manufacturers, including Siemens, GE, Phillips, Toshiba and Bender place great trust in TClarke. As Gareth Brunton of Bender UK says:
“TClarke has exceptional technical expertise and precision manufacturing capability. That’s what makes them such valuable business partners. We see them as a vital part of our team.”
Healthcare is different – TClarke teams have the right expertise
Construction in the healthcare sector is very different and TClarke knows this. Patient care, dignity and diversity is paramount. Beyond being able to point to a long record of successful projects, we can, perhaps even more valuably, point to the stable in-house healthcare teams we have in our business.
TClarke teams are our greatest advantage. Our people take pride in their work and their skills and expertise stay in our business. This knowledge base is central to our ability to bid and win Healthcare projects. As Garth Weaver Director of Estates, Royal Cornwall NHS Trusts says:
“What we value most about TClarke is the fact that they understand what engineering in a live hospital environment demands. Our trust has grown over the years that we’ve worked together.”
New opportunities to showcase our market leading intelligent buildings capability
The new opportunity that I see, is for our business to bring our industry-leading building controls and intelligent buildings systems capability into the healthcare environment. These capabilities, built on some of the most advanced new commercial developments in London – and therefore in the world – have a huge potential value and relevance for the healthcare sector.
The benefits to security, access control, fire protection environmental performance and management efficiency are huge. TClarke can bring even more to our healthcare clients in these areas and our TCIB and ETON operations represent another substantial range of in-house expertise and skills we can put on the table.
Part of our long-term strategy bringing balance to our business
TClarke is an incredibly solid British business, with homegrown engineering and construction expertise and real jobs and career opportunities in local communities across the UK. Our teams take a lot of personal pride in the work we do with our NHS partners and these projects are highly motivatng and important for us on a purely human level.
At the same time, from a strategic, commercial point of view, these are high-skill projects involving complexity in the programme, resilience and equipment involved, within a sector where sustained long-term growth is certain (in line with our ageing population and the increasing potential to deliver healthcare solutions for our people).
We set out some years ago, very deliberately, to build our capabilities to serve the healthcare sector. In so doing, we are also bringing a strategic balance to our business which is important and extremely valuable in sustaining our growth.